Rumor: Apple to cancel the Mac Mini

The smallest, most affordable Mac may soon be no more.

I remember it like yesterday, Steve Jobs standing on the stage with mock turtleneck and self-congratulatory smirk, holding out his hand to the Faithful. In his palm, brought forth fully-formed from the mind of Jonathan Ive, rested the Mac mini.

"Starting at just $499, Mac mini is the most affordable way to enjoy Mac OS X and iLife," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Just plug in your display, keyboard and mouse and you’ve got an incredibly compact Mac for a price that almost anyone can afford."

Of course, in the ensuing two years and change, the most affordable Mac has become $100 less so, starting at $599, though it's also gotten Intel inside. In February of 2006, the Mac mini made the transition, and in September of the same year was upgraded to Core Duo across the line. Since then, nothing. It's been almost nine months since the last Mac mini update, even though Core 2 Duo is the standard for consumer Macs. To that end, AppleInsider was not afraid to put their reputation on the line for what comes as a non-surprise.

Therefore, it comes as little surprise that sources, for whom AppleInsider
holds the utmost respect, are now pointing towards the mini's impending
demise.

No solid reasons are given for the supposed demise of the Mac mini, nor a time frame. It's all left to speculation, which is the largely the point of a rumor. So let's begin.

With the advent of the Apple TV, one of the most popular uses for the Mac mini, the HTPC, has been eliminated (at least from Apple's point of view). Those of us who want more than an appliance connected to the TV—or to control the volume of what we are watching using the Apple Remote—might disagree, but has Apple ever really listened to the enthusiast? Speaking of which, there will be those who see the impending doom of the Mac mini as a sign that the mythical xMac—the sub-$1000 mini-tower with a few slots—is imminent, but that is a forlorn hope.

The original Mac mini was a response to the lack of a low-end desktop, a "headless" Mac that was less expensive than purchasing an iMac with its built-in LCD. It was likely also designed with the goal of avoiding cannibalization of the higher-end Macs, hence poor upgradability could plausibly have been disguised as an "an incredibly compact Mac." The question then becomes whether Apple has now decided to abandon the sub-$1000 computer market. Apple has not.

The consumer has.

Desktop sales have been in decline for some time now, both among Mac users and PC users. Desktops are still popular in the enterprise, but Apple has no enterprise business to speak of. Sure, there are the pros, but they are increasingly a niche group, as are iMac users. The Mac mini is likely just one niche too many, and shedding it is quite possibly just the first step in the next transition by Apple.

Today the Mac mini, tomorrow the desktop. The future belongs to the laptop.